Use Calvetica As An Alternative to iOS Calendar App

The Calendar and Reminders apps in the iOS software definitely work better since the release of iOS 5, but is there something better out there? If you go to the App Store, it can be easy to get overwhelmed by all the choices of To Do List apps and Calendar apps. Where do you start?

I’ve downloaded countless number of calendar apps, but they never seem to do everything I want, or at the very least do it better than the Calendar app that’s included with iOS. I do a lot of scheduling due to a writing gig I have that details what’s on TV every night. That requires me to keep track of what’s on every night, the series premieres, season finales, etc. I need a system I can reference and change easily and often. I have found that Calvetica will do that for me.

Like most calendar apps, Calvetica syncs up automatically with the native Calendar app, and does this without any work on your part. Upon opening the app, after giving you the option to read the FAQs, it gives you a showing of the current month, with the current day’s events highlighted in a two-column view. Many of the other Calendar apps have added abilities that just seem to make the apps more confusing. Calvetica doesn’t. It just gives you the basics that you need, just like the Helvetica typeface it’s based on. This makes it very functional, yet easy enough to get up and running very quickly.

Calvetica supports multiple calendar views. It shows a whole month in one view, with a day’s events laid out in a second column to the right, and also supports a weekly view that makes it much easier to see it all laid out visually.

Creating a new event is easy enough. Instead of scrolling through months, days, and hours to get the right time and day for the start and end of the event, it’s simply a matter of tapping individual choices. Once again, it’s a very visual process, exactly how it should be with an iPhone, iPad, or iTouch.

While adding the event, you can also choose the repeat frequency and any attendee you want to invite to the event. You can then get Calvetica to notify the attendee a notice by email or phone call.

Tasks are just as easy to add in. By clicking a button in the menu bar, you can switch to the task menu. Adding in the tasks goes very much the same way as adding in an event. If you click “Add” at the end it just adds the one event. If you click “Add +”, you can add multiple events without having to bring up the dialogue box again and again. There is no place to add in a Stepping Away From iOS Calendar Options With Calveticadate through this, but if you click on the date you want to add the task, it will be added to that date. The tasks can be displayed in a week menu in the sidebar or by day. After the task is completed, just click the checkmark to the side of it in the sidebar, or drag the bar in the editing dialogue box. To delete the task, slide your finger across and press delete, or use the editing dialogue box.

The settings menu has many options that can be changed to suit your needs, including changing defaults and alarms. Alarms can be set for your events to work along with the alarms from Apple. The people at Calvetica have thoughtfully engineered this so that their alarms go off about fifteen seconds after Apple’s. There is also a way to set a snooze. Additionally, the alarm sounds are meant to be louder and sometimes even longer than the Apple alarms to allow you to differentiate between the two.

Signing up for a “Pocket Lint” account will keep all your data synced with their site, so that if your device goes down and you lose your data, you can get your Calvetica info back. They only need your email and a password.

Signing up for a Pocket Lint account also helps keep your data synched throughout your devices. I added Calvetica to my iPhone, and it automatically came up with all the same events. The display is a little more compact, but works just the same. Because of its compactness, examining your events by month can’t be read, although you can see that there is data there. You will have to read your events in the display at the bottom.

However, my events didn’t sync up. I tried everything to figure out why this wasn’t working. I read through the FAQ, the Known Bugs, checked all the settings in both the Settings app and Calvetica on both the iPad and iPhone, Googled my issue, checked the developer’s website, etc., and still my events I set up on the iPad wouldn’t appear on the iPhone. What I eventually realized is that Pocket Lint set me up with two task groups called “My Tasks”. Changing from one to the other did nothing. I found a setting in the Settings menu of Calvetica that allows for the management of task groups. Once I added a new task group and assigned my tasks to the new group, they synced.

Once everything was set up in the Settings of Calvetica on both the iPhone and iPad, it worked exactly as it should, giving me alerts where and when I wanted them through the Notifications.

While it may seem like this is a lot to go through, it isn’t more so than any other calendar app that does this much. It’s the easiest-to-understand display and also has all those functions attached to it. The good thing is that it syncs automatically with the native Calendar app so you don’t have to switch away from the default. Rather than an alternative, I would think it more of a complement to the default Calendar app.

Which Calendar app do you use?

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One comment

Kjetilsays

Thanks for yet another useful tip. I just like to add in “Week calendar” as a good option. Easy to use with different view, even with week numbers that we in Europe use a lot. Like Calvetica, I believe, it will take you a little time to find all the ins and out, but just the rating in Itunes store should be a hint. But it costs you a dollar to try it. Kjetil